


Imelda the Raccoon

by samwhambam



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Gen, in celebration of international raccoon day, she is quite the sweetest thing, there's a raccoon behind the cafe, this is just the response of some of the towns people to her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26742367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samwhambam/pseuds/samwhambam
Summary: Twyla discovers that there's a a friendly raccoon living behind the cafe.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 33
Collections: Raccoons Everywhere!





	Imelda the Raccoon

**Author's Note:**

> Happy international raccoon day!! 
> 
> Special thanks to [kiranerys42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiranerys42) who really put all this together. 
> 
> Thank you to [dameofpowellestate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dameofpowellestate/pseuds/dameofpowellestate) who betad for me!

Twyla tied the strings on the garbage bag and hoisted it up. It was very close to tearing at the bottom, so she scurried through the kitchen of the café and kicked the backdoor open. She dropped the bag onto the ground next to the dumpster, and threw the lid up. There was a loud hiss and she jumped back with a shout.

“What?!” Twyla shouted. She peered into the trash can. “Wait.” At the bottom was a little raccoon. “Aw.”

It peered up at her and she felt her heart melt. “Are you stuck?”

The raccoon stayed quiet. 

“I think you’re stuck,” She whispered to herself. She looked around to try to find...oh! There was a long piece of plywood leaning against the nearest fence. She grabbed it and stared at the raccoon. “Please don’t attack me.”

She placed the plywood in the trash can. Once she let go, the raccoon ran up it and tumbled off the edge onto the ground. 

“Oh no!” It ran underneath the dumpster. Just it’s nose was poking out and Twyla reached for the bag. She undid the tie and pushed around the top contents until she reached the last few bites of the dinner she picked at while closing up the cafe. “Here you go.”

Twyla put the food on the ground, a short distance from where the raccoon was hiding. She threw away her trash and paused at the door to the café. The raccoon came out slowly and rifled through the food Twyla left for it. 

It looked up at her and Twyla waited just a bit longer. The raccoon picked up the food and began to eat. 

“Good night!” Twyla called out. It just kept eating and Twyla went back into the cafe. 

*

Twyla named the raccoon Imelda, after her uncle’s third ex-wife’s first cat, who was also black and white. But always smelled awful. And Twyla smelled awful after playing with the cat. 

She left food for Imelda every night when she took out the trash and even managed to pet them a week later. 

It wasn’t long before Imelda was out from hiding and waiting for Twyla each evening.

*

“Twyla!”

Twyla jumped and took out her earphones. She had a solo coming up for a Jazzagals performance and was listening to the song during a lull at the cafe to memorize the words. Ray was standing on the other side of the counter with an excited smile. 

“Ray! Hi!” Twyla folded her hands over the lyrics she printed out. “What can I get for you?”

“Oh, nothing!” Ray shook his head. “You see, I was out looking at the back of the cafe to see if you could benefit from my new alley organizing services. It’s an extension of my closet organizing business.”

Twyla raised her eyebrows at him as he took a breath. 

“And I noticed that you have a loose raccoon running around your dumpster, so I wanted to give you my business card,” Twyla accepted the card he was holding out to her.  _ Ray’s Wildlife Handling.  _ “I specialize in moving wild animals back into the wild.”

“Oh,” Twyla hadn’t heard of this business yet. Except, Imelda wasn’t really a wild animal. “The raccoon is fine where she is, thanks Ray.”

“Okay, well if you change your mind, feel free to reach out. The first catch and release is 20% off,” Ray clasped his hands in front of himself. “I would love to help you out.”

“Actually!” Twyla reached out to stop him. “There’s a spider in the bathroom that I’ve been too scared to get rid of. It’s pretty big. Can you take it outside?”

Ray paused, a smile frozen on his face and Twyla could sense the  _ ‘no’  _ before he could say it. 

“You know, my speciality is animals that already have a relationship with humans. The raccoon outside seemed very polite, whereas the spider has no regard for others,” Ray explained. Twyla followed the logic. Kind of. “Best you handle that one on your own.”

“Okay,” Twyla replied as Ray began to walk away. “Okay.”

She looked around in confusion. No one else seemed to have noticed their interaction, or needed her. She put her earphones back in and pressed play on the song. 

*

Twyla was ready before the door even opened. Stevie and David always came to breakfast on Tuesday mornings at 8. Stevie was always on time, David always came in ten minutes later. Twyla had the menus in hand at 7:59 and when Stevie walked in, Twyla was already laying the menus down on their usual booth table. 

“I’ll bring David’s coffee over in a few minutes,” Twyla said. Before she could walk away, Stevie cackled and shook her head. 

“You might want to wait on that,” Stevie tilted her head at Twyla. “David’s actually early today, but that raccoon you’ve been feeding hissed at him. Twice. Now he’s pacing the corner across the street and trying to work up the courage to cross the street. So I think it’s going to be awhile.”

Twyla bit back her laugh and nodded. “I should probably go help him.”

“Or you could leave him to suffer,” Stevie shrugged. “It’s what I would do. At least for another five minutes.”

“Oh,” Twyla giggled. “I would, but my 3rd cousin told me that one hiss from a raccoon is a warning, but more than that and you’re likely to lose a finger.”

_ No.  _ Twyla scrunched her nose as she thought about it.  _ That wasn’t right.  _

“Actually, the more that I think about it, I think that’s just about possums,” Twyla corrected herself. “I should still go help.”

“Suit yourself,” Stevie swung her legs out of the booth. “Can I serve myself some coffee?”

“Go for it!”

Outside, David was pacing the corner. Patrick stood on the steps leading up the store. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she crossed the road anyways. 

“David, I checked and the raccoon isn’t anywhere near here,” Patrick soothed. 

“You didn’t see it because it’s hiding, just waiting for me to cross the street, and then it’s going to attack,” David gestured to the cafe. 

“Oh, Imelda won’t attack. She’s really nice,” Twyla said. “Plus, it’s her nap time. She was probably just cranky.”

David raised his eyebrows at her. “Her nap time? Is she your pet?”

“Not a pet, just an animal I feed and take care of,” Twyla corrected. It was definitely Imelda’s naptime. David just probably got her at a bad time. “I can walk you across the street, if it’ll make you feel comfortable?”

She could hear Patrick laughing from the steps. 

“I don’t need you to walk me to the café,” David said with an eyeroll.

“Okay,” Twyla turned around and began to walk back to the cafe. 

She could hear David walking quickly and feel him close behind her. 

*

Twyla paused, her hand frozen on the table where she was wiping it with a rag as she listened carefully. It sounded like someone was talking, but she was alone. 

She was tired and moving through closing as fast as she could. Her closer had cancelled on her at the last minute because of a nasty stomach bug and now she had to deal with… was that Bob?

Twyla walked through the empty restaurant and dropped the rag on the counter. The voice was coming from the alley and she peeked out the back door and sure enough, Bob was sitting on the ground, talking to the dumpster. 

“It’s just that, she told me we’d work on things and it would be better, but as soon as her friend left the priesthood,  _ again,  _ I knew it was truly over,” Bob sniffled and Twyla began to slink back through the door into the safety of her cafe. Except her elbow hit the doorframe and she gasped in pain. “Twyla!”

“Hi Bob,” Twyla stepped into the alleyway. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just needed someone to talk to,” Bob explained. He nodded towards the dumpster. “Saw the raccoon from the street and figured, they’d be as good as any.”

“Oh.”

Imelda shimmied out from underneath the dumpster to sit at Twyla’s feet.

“Well,” Twyla looked down at the raccoon who tilted her head at Twyla. Any other night and Twyla would offer to listen to Bob, who looked like he really needed it, but not tonight. She was just  _ so tired. _ “Let me get Imelda’s dinner and then you can carry on.”

She walked back into the café before she could feel bad. 

*

The cafe was empty; it was right in the mid-afternoon lull where the lunch crowd had cleared and it was still too early for the knitting club. Twyla picked up her latest library book and set to reading. She was 10 pages into  _ The Fault in Our Stars  _ when the cafe door opened and she looked up to see Ronnie walking in. 

“Hey kid,” Ronnie said as she walked over to where Twyla was sitting at the counter. 

“Ronnie! Hi, do you need a menu?” Twyla nudged her bookmark into the spine of the book and closed it. 

“No, just here for business,” Ronnie sat down next to Twyla. 

“Okay?” Twyla racked her brain for what Ronnie was there for. She had paid Ronnie already for the job that she just finished and there wasn’t anything else that she had missed…

“I heard that you have a new pet,” Ronnie raised an eyebrow at her. “You know that owning a raccoon as a pet is illegal in Ontario, right?”

“Oh, I don’t,” Twyla shook her head. The whole thing was just spinning out of control. “It’s not actually my pet.”

“You named her,” Ronnie pointed out. 

“I name everything, you know that,” Twyla responded. “I leave food out for her because she gets stuck in the dumpster all the time, but she’s not my pet. I’m not going to bring her home or let her into the café.”

“Okay, just wanted to remind you,” Ronnie hit her knuckles on the countertop. “I have to get back to town hall. Roland was going to come to talk to you about it, but I figured no one needs that today.”

“Thank you, Ronnie.”

“Don’t mention it,” Ronnie stood up. “I know someone whose cat just had kittens, you want one? Can get you an appropriate pet.”

Oh, that would be nice. It’d been a while since Twyla had a real pet; since her ex-step-dad had gotten her a bunny when she was 9. The bunny went with him when he left when she was 10. 

“You know what, yeah, I’d like that,” Twyla said. 

“I’ll give you a call after I get more details,” Ronnie confirmed. 

“Sounds great.”

*

Imelda hung out in the alley for a full four months before she left. Twyla went out with some scraps from the last few customers, but when she went out after closing, the food was still there. She stood still, but couldn’t hear the raccoon. There was no sign of her anywhere and fear clawed through Twyla’s veins. 

She pulled her car keys out of her jacket pocket and climbed in. She drove around for a little less than an hour, just trying to find any trace of her, but there was nothing. 

When she pulled into her driveway, she felt a little better, but the fear hung on and she just hoped that Imelda was safe and had enough to eat and didn’t cross paths with the Robertson’s dog that was  _ very  _ aggressive when it came to animals that were smaller than it. 

Weeks went by and Twyla still hadn’t come across Imelda. No one in town had mentioned that they’d seen her, and Twyla took that as a good sign. 

A full month after Imelda left, Twyla was walking up and down her block as a cool down after her run when she saw a flash of gray and black streak between two bushes. 

“Imelda!” Twyla called out. The animal peeked its head out of the bushes and Twyla wanted to cry with relief at the sight of the raccoon, with her two misshapen splotches of black around her eyes. 

They stared at each other until Imelda slowly morphed back into the bush. 

At least Imelda was alive and looked as chunky as ever. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr[here](https://samwhambam.tumblr.com/) !


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